Even in the dark, I saw her cheeks blaze red. It did nothing to diminish her beauty. It amplified it.
“I was only trying to protect people.” Her voice cracked, close to tears.
“From what?”
“From the types of love that hurt.” She paused. “From the kind that hurt me.”
She immediately slapped a hand over her mouth. As if the words had escaped without permission and they betrayed her.
Her admission took her and me off guard.
“I have to go,” she said quickly.
She straightened, arms rising to close the window. She was going to shut me out. That I couldn’t have.
I risked life and limb and gently caught her arm. Her soft and warm skin was too familiar. The god in me buzzed to life. Or maybe this time it was me who wanted to know her heart. Wanted to know why she felt the need to protect people from love. And who had hurt her.
“Demi,” I whispered, trying to keep my other half at bay. He wanted to unleash the ballad he’d written for her. “I’m sorry, I came off harsher than I meant to.”
She looked up, avoiding my gaze, yet she didn’t pull away from me.
“I deserve it. You don’t think I know everyone blames me for all the unhappiness in the world right now? Even my father does. But I had good intentions. Either way . . .” She hit me with her perfected glare. “I won’t be your show’s villain. And I have every intention of helping each woman thisseason find true love, even if the goddess part of me has been known to give faulty information.”
“What?” I blinked. “That’s not possible. Those sides of us don’t lie.”
“Well, mine has once. Anyway . . .”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. But it did.
“Hold on. We aren’t skipping past this. I need to know what happened.” I was more than curious about why she thought her goddess had lied to her. Maybe I could help her see she was mistaken. And possibly salvage the fragile friendship we’d tried to forge.
She squared her shoulders.
“That’s never happening. Just know this, Roman Archer, I will not play some wicked role for your show or let anyone tell me what my story is going to be.”
She pointed at her nightshirt.
“There will be no more black clothes. No more trying to pit me against anyone. I am going to be the perkiest, cutest, biggest cheerleader you have ever seen. And with any luck, I’ll have matches made for everyone by the end of week one, and it will be an entire season of corny, sappy love and everything my rule book goes against.”
She flashed me a snarky grin. Like she’d just declared war with pom-poms.
“Get ready to take notes,son of Cupid.”
I’ll give her this—she was radiant in her rage. Albeit scary. I dropped my hand and stared at her incredulously. She was going to do more than sabotage my show—she was going to take it over.
“Oh, and don’t bother running with me tomorrow,” she added. “I’d rather have a tree fall on me than let you try to get into my head again and use it against me for ratings.”
“I wouldn’t—” I started, desperate to defend myself and try to steer this conversation back to the original intent of my traipsing over here in the middle of the night. Didn’t she see the gods were determined to meddle? Determined to forge some type of friendship between us, come hell or high water. Most likely hell at this rate.
“Good night,” she chirped, way too happily and with a victorious smirk. Then, she slammed the window shut and yanked the curtains closed like the closing punctuation mark in her declaration of war.
Well.
That hadn’t gone how I’d planned.
You should’ve sung her the ballad,my rogue half chided.
Oh, I had a ballad for her, all right:
